Description
The fearless reporter Tatiana Petrovna falls to her death from a sixth-floor window in Moscow the same week that a mob billionaire, Grisha Grigo-renko, is shot and buried with the trappings due a lord. No one else makes the connection, but Arkady is transfixed by the tapes he discovers of Tatianaโs voice describing horrific crimes in words that are at odds with the Kremlinโs official versions.The trail leads to Kaliningrad, a Cold War โsecret cityโ that is separated by hundreds of miles from the rest of Russia. The more Arkady delves into Tatianaโs past, the more she leads him into a surreal world of wandering sand dunes, abandoned chilยญdren, and a notebook written in the personal code of a dead translator. Finally, in a lethal race to uncover what the translator knew, Arkady makes a startling discovery that draws him still deeper into Tatianaโs past -- and, paradoxically, into Russiaโs future, where bulletproof cars, poets, corruption of the Baltic Fleet, and a butcher for hire combine to give Kaliningrad the โdistinctionโ of having the highest crime rate in Russia. ISBN:9781439140222
